‘ ,v — 
qU RNA^ T? 
s u burbam 
^Try h o 
Vol. 
LXXIX. 
Published Weekly by The Rural Publishing Co., 
333 W. 30tli St.. New York. Price One Dollar a Year. 
NEW YORK, ATRIP 10, 1921 
Entered as Second-Class Matter. June 26, 1879. at the Post 
Office at New York, N. Y., under the Act of March 3, 1879. 
No. 4034 
Cabbage Seed Production on Long, Island 
P OOR SEEL).—Everyone knows the course of de¬ 
velopment by which a humble but ambitious 
cabbage seed gets ahead in the world, but only a 
small minority of even farmers know the details of 
the reverse procedure by which seed is produced. 
•Still less known are the methods of the seed breedei 
who gives us new varieties or improves old ones. 
The pictures and descriptions in the seed catalogs 
pbice where it can be raised fora good crop of heads. 
In actual practice much of the seed*is imported from 
Denmark and nearby parts of .Holland, (lermany and 
France. Most of tbe American seed comes from a 
small region in Eastern Kong Island and from a few 
neighborhoods in the Puget Sound region in ’Wash¬ 
ington. There are plenty of other places where it 
can be successfully grown, but in these localities the 
make us independent of imported supplies, but to 
secure the development of soils, climate and markets. 
As cabbage seed is insect pollinated, only one variety 
can be raised on a farm, and by preference only one 
should be raised in a neighborhood. 
CULTIVATION UNDER CONTRACT.—The cab- 
bage, as it grows wild, is a perennial, but the domes¬ 
tic cabbage is as distinctly biennial as the beet or 
/i loud of melons on a New Jersey farm. High freight rates and poor service are bringing the melon business bark to the East 
give the impression that all seed is from the selected 
products of a master seed breeder. When the farmej 
finds that many of his plants fail to head and others 
are light in weight, with big air spaces and coarse, 
stumpy leaves, he properly lays it to poor seed. 
IIOME-CROWN SUPPLIES.—Many have an idea 
that only a few localities can produce cabbage seed, 
and while this is true of its near relative, the cauli¬ 
flower. the cabbage will grow good seed crops in any 
ciop tits into the peculiar and intensive crop rotation, 
and what is even more important, the buyers conic 
to the farmers to solicit them to raise seed and guar¬ 
antee them a fixed price. American seed is not 
especially different in quality from imported seed. 
Both differ just as widely as the abilities and per¬ 
sonalities of the farmers or seedsmen who raise the 
crop. It is desirable that we should produce cabbage 
seed in a great many other localities not only to 
rutabaga or the common burdock and mullein. In 
other words, the plant must grow and store food 
the first season and then after a dormant period it 
will produce flowers and seeds. This takes the 
greater part of two seasons, but the resourceful 
farmer is able to grow an early maturing crop before 
the plants go into the field and a late Autumn crop 
after the seed is harvested. This is the practice as 
followed at Mattituck, and may be adopted with 
